When the Night Comes (26 page)

L
ansdowne Crescent and the rain came down now.

I knew every step of that curved road. Every single step. The street was empty like always. A ghost town—a dead town. And even though I could feel the rain and it was wetting my hair and making it stick to my face, I didn't even care about it. But when I got to the phone box, I opened the glass door and went inside anyway, into the stale-smelling cubicle with the concrete floor, with torn phone books, and half-rubbed-off graffiti written in black marker on the walls.

I stood there in the phone box and leant up against the glass. I watched the rain fall. I could feel the cold come up from the ground now that I had stopped walking—now that I was still. I picked up the heavy gray receiver, held it there against my ear. It was working, the phone. I could hear the dial tone purring down the line from somewhere far away.

I thought about Bo. Perhaps on another ship somewhere, traveling up to the east coast of Greenland. Or maybe he was at home sleeping on his little island. A place I didn't have a complete picture of.

Then I thought about that film,
Local Hero
. It's about a man from a big city in the USA who works for an oil company. He is sent to Scotland, somewhere really remote and beautiful, a small fishing village by the sea. It's his job to buy the whole village and turn it into an oil refinery. Everyone wants to sell their land. The people who live there all want to be rich, except one man who lives in a wooden shack right on the sand
of the beach. He says he has no need for the money. He says he has all he needs.

The man from the USA spends a long time in this village trying to get this one man who lives on the beach to sell. He tries everything. He spends weeks trying. And somewhere along the way he starts to change. His insides change. He stops shaving and wearing suits. He spends time collecting shells on the beach. He starts to forget about time.

But he gets sent home very suddenly and he doesn't even get time to say a real good-bye. He has to leave in a helicopter and look down at the village and the beaches from above and watch it fall away underneath him.

When he gets back to his modern apartment in the big city, it is night and he looks out at the bright lights of the skyscrapers from his high-rise balcony. He looks out and he thinks,
Is this my home? This place? I don't remember who the person was who lived here. I don't think I know him.

There is one last scene in the film—a shot of a phone box. It's the red phone box in the small fishing village in Scotland. It is early morning, I think, fog is coming down and it looks cold. The street is empty. And quiet.

The camera stays on the phone box and the empty street for a long time—in silence. The silence goes on as the camera stays still, zooms in slowly toward the phone box. Then the phone starts to ring. It rings out clean and loud, calling out. And it keeps on ringing. The phone just keeps on ringing, and you want someone to answer it. You want someone to run over and pick up the receiver because you know it is the man from the USA calling. You know he is calling to say,
I am coming home.

A
small package by the door, all brown tape and paper. A package with my name on it, my first name and then the address, Allison Street, West Hobart.

It had a round ink stamp on it, red with two penguins standing side by side and underneath them the words
Macquarie Island
.

I took the package inside, put it on the table in the sunroom. I sat down on a chair and I started to carefully undo the brown tape.

Inside was a letter in an old, used envelope—someone's name had been crossed out in blue pen and mine was written above it. There was something else wrapped in more paper, more tape. Something round.

A roll of film in a black plastic canister.

A roll of film.

Isla,

I am leaving this with the postmaster so it will come with the next ship.

Maybe it will get there when you need it most.

We are fine. The captain lost a tooth and there are some bruises, but mostly we are fine. It was a bad storm, with wind and rain and a swell that whipped up out of nowhere, but we all made it to shore on the LARCs. Everyone did a great job.

Today the ocean is a lake, both sides of the island so calm,
asleep. Three days like this—it is so strange! If only we'd been one day late, if we'd stayed out doing the marine survey, if only we'd been delayed in Hobart . . .

These thoughts go on and on. What if?

We sleep in the mess, or where we can fit. People here have been so kind and they try to keep our minds off things, hot showers and food, a few good home-brew beers. But it is there always, this bad feeling—
Nella
is there, stuck on the rocks, and we can't go out to her, even to get our things. She is just there, but we can't go.

I was sure I could hear her bell in the night, just softly—calling me. Such a sad sound! I don't know if I have ever heard such a thing. Maybe I was dreaming, I don't know, but I went outside because I could not stay there anymore feeling like that.

Outside it was clear, the sun already up—3 AM
. No wind, almost no sound. Something very strange for this island because there is always wind. Always the sound of the water and the wind blowing in the grass and getting in your ears. I went along the path and I could see
Nella
there, on an angle, stuck on the rocks. I kept walking toward her, but then I turned away. I could not look at her stuck there, so I went down a path I hadn't been on before.

When you are walking here, you have to be careful. There are elephant seals everywhere and they look like rocks. Then they move or burp and you get a big surprise. Huge fat seals! But there are little ones too, babies. They have the biggest eyes you have ever seen. Round and deep like space.

I got to a beach and sat down on the black sand. There were giant petrels and skuas looking for food, looking for scraps—baby seals huddled together in groups, sleeping then waking and wanting more milk. Calling out to mum. Still no wind. The ocean dead calm.

Maybe hours went by, I don't know. I wasn't cold. I just watched.

Some little gentoo penguins were about. I could hear them above the noise of the elephant seals. They are shy, nesting in the grass, and it's hard to see them. But then one came out, walked right there in front of me.

I took my glove off so that I could take a photo. I have Soren's camera. It was around my neck when the order was given to abandon ship. It's lucky. I'm glad I have it. I don't want to lose it. My glove fell and landed near the penguin. I held my breath but the gentoo stayed. It didn't run away. Its little orange feet were bright against the sand and it came closer, inspected my glove. It pecked at it a few times, then it stood up and looked right at me. I can't tell you how long that moment lasted, but everything inside me that was scared disappeared. It was gone.

The photo is probably not straight and maybe it is out of focus, but it shows the moment. How close he was, my little friend who came to say hello. To lift my spirits.

It is for you. A gentoo and my glove there on the sand at Macquarie Island, 6 December 1987.

There are other photos. I don't know if they're good or bad—but they are there and I took them. And then there's
Nella
—our little ship.

Isn't she the best?

T
he photos as they came—black-and-white.

A rocky beach, huge iced-in cliffs behind. Heard Island.

The sun and the moon in the sky all at once, the soft light always there.

A cape petrel, painted black and white and perfectly small. Bo's favorite bird.

Nella Dan
right there on the shore, on the rocks. White letters that spell out
MACQUARIE ISLAND
on round fuel drums beside her—the water calm, the water still. Her body slightly on its side.

Her last days.

The last photo—a gentoo penguin on a dark beach, a glove, and the very edge of a shoe. Bo's shoe.

It is the only picture I have of him—his glove, a gentoo penguin and his shoe. But he is there in the photo, his eyes behind his friend's camera. He is there in the background, taking it all in, silent and still as he was.

I have had these photos for twenty-five years. I have looked at them so many times that they have become part of my makeup.

A cellular memory. A map. A way.

I hold one up now, black and white. A thin isthmus with triangular peaks reaching for the sky on either side. And behind the photo, the real thing—Macquarie Island, in full color.

Green where there was none. Green where there had only been blue and gray and white.

“So green,” he said, “green and like a big wet sponge. You never even knew you missed it, green, until you'd been in the ice for so long. Then it hit you. LIFE!”

This place is special and there is nowhere else like it.
She is waiting for you to come, ready when you get here.

The last words sent to me from Bo, written in pencil on scraps of paper, yellow and worn now with time, but still the pencil marks are clear.

Your friend,

Bo Anker Johansen

I stand on the bow of my orange ship. Photos are silent but Macquarie Island screams with life.

We had rough swell and strong winds all night, but in the morning at first light—3:16
AM
—the ocean went to sleep. Out my porthole, Macca stood tall, dusted with snow as the sun burst open a blue sky.

All the things he told me, all the things he said, were true and real and I am here.

Bo—I am here.

Bornholm

“Papa? Tell me about the sea.”